


An Unreliable Thing

by thedevilchicken



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Amnesia, Captivity, Developing Relationship, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, Guilt, Identity Issues, Injury Recovery, M/M, Manipulative Sheev Palpatine, Medical Procedures, Past Rape/Non-con, Religious Guilt, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 16:33:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15561873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Grievous is injured in a shuttle crash. What the Jedi are ordered to do to keep him living does not sit well with Obi-Wan, but he knows where his duty lies.When Grievous wakes with no memories, except for one that tells him - wrongly - that he and Obi-Wan were lovers once, the lines between duty and desire become much more blurred.





	An Unreliable Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shanlyrical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shanlyrical/gifts).



After his capture, they made something even more monstrous of General Grievous than he'd been before. 

This is the truth of the matter as it is known to Obi-Wan Kenobi, and he knows it better than anyone else does. It was his ship that they took the dying general to once he'd been pulled from the wreckage, his ship they sent the surgeons to, and he was there on that ship, watching General Grievous die, when the Council was told that they couldn't let that happen. The intelligence they might gather from him was, the Senate put it to the Council who relayed that sentiment to Obi-Wan, worth the cost. Frankly, Obi-Wan himself was not so certain. 

"Surely you can see we can't do this," he said, when Master Windu called to him inform him of the Senate's orders. "He might be our enemy but he's not an animal. In fact, I can't help but feel we would treat an animal with more respect." 

Master Windu sighed. "The chancellor understands your point of view," he said. "It's been considered. It's been taken into account."

"And dismissed."

"If you insist on seeing it that way, yes." Master Windu paused then, tucking his hands into the sleeves of his robe. "The chancellor ordered this, Obi-Wan. Will you see it done?"

Obi-Wan grimaced. "I won't prevent it," he said. 

"That's all we ask."

Master Windu faded out, and Obi-Wan couldn't help but feel somehow defeated. He couldn't he but feel somehow conflicted. But, five days later, he returned to Coruscant with their prisoner still living, albeit somewhat...changed. He escorted the doctors down the Temple's labyrinthine corridors to Grievous's new cell, and he told himself firmly that he should go to his quarters, await his new orders, and forget the whole sordid affair. He would have liked to have done so very much, but the Council only gave him one night; the following day, they assigned him the interrogation. 

"Why me, exactly?" he asked, though he felt quite petulant for asking it. 

"Because you'll treat him fairly," Master Windu said, though Obi-Wan rather suspected that was not the whole story. "Chancellor Palpatine recommended Skywalker. We recommended you." 

Obi-Wan understood the implication. He set his jaw and nodded tightly, and he made his way down to the cells where he'd so recently promised himself he would not need to be again for a very long time. The guards at the door stepped aside to admit him. The doctors inside said Grievous had yet to regain consciousness. Obi-Wan said he'd wait, and they nodded, so he did. 

He waited for hours, pacing the room one minute and sitting restlessly in a chair by the bed the next. He tried to meditate to calm his mind to absolutely no avail, and though he would have liked to believe it was the irregular, seemingly arbitrary beeping and whirring and hissing of the medical machinery arrayed about the prisoner, he was acutely aware that it was not. The issue was the man lying in the bed, and the fact that Obi-Wan wanted no part in this. He supposed, however, that he was already in it just as deeply as anyone; his duties occasionally led him to places he did not want to venture, and this was one of those times. 

He waited there for just over four hours, distracted and agitated. Then, Grievous woke. He moved. He opened his eyes. Back on the ship, as the anaesthetic had taken hold, Grievous's yellow-gold eyes had been on him; when they'd closed, Obi-Wan had hoped for all their sakes that he wouldn't wake again. When he woke then, he opened his eyes and he looked at him again. And, for all his waiting, Obi-Wan fled the room and threw up in the nearest 'fresher. 

Maybe what they'd done hadn't worked well, but it had worked nonetheless. His eyes weren't yellow; they were green.

\---

Master Kalta Jayan was a male human from Chalacta. Obi-Wan supposes that after his death, his body continued to be exactly that: a male human from Chalacta. The difference was that he no longer had his long, dark hair that had fallen in a braid down to his waist, because the surgeons had shaved it off. There was a scar that even bacta couldn't heal that ran pink against his olive skin. And, inside, he wasn't quite as Chalactan as he'd been in life - especially not with a Kaleesh brain inside his head. 

If it hadn't been so horrifying it would've been ridiculous, Obi-Wan thought, as he stepped back into the room. What the hired surgeons had done was amazing, yes, but awful, like something from the pages of a third-rate novel he'd once found abandoned in his cabin on a mission with his master and read compulsively from cover to cover. Twice, as it happened, because he'd had nothing else to do at the time. But Grievous didn't spring from the bed and attempt to choke the life from him with Kalta Jayan's hands the way he would have in the novel. He looked at him and he spluttered and jerked until the Jedi doctors were forced to sedate him. So, Obi-Wan found himself waiting again. 

In a few hours' time, he woke and his lips moved but the only sound that came out was a whine and then a wheezy cough until he hyperventilated and passed out where he lay, before the doctors could administer further sedation. A few hours after that, he woke again and he peered at Obi-Wan as his hands twitched and his shoulders jerked and he growled, the sound so foreign to a human voice that production of it must have pained him, though the medication in his system may well have taken care of that. Obi-Wan slept in the chair and when he woke in the morning with a crick in his neck, he found Grievous sitting up in bed, though whether unconscious or just sleeping was somewhat difficult to tell. 

"It took him three hours to sit himself up," one of the doctors told Obi-Wan, when he went over the speak with them. 

"Is that normal?" he asked. 

"That's incredible," the doctor replied. "We didn't expect him to move by himself for at least a week, perhaps as long as three." 

"Or never?"

The doctor inclined her head. "Or never," she confirmed. 

Obi-Wan supposed that made a great deal of sense, given what they'd done, and given what was holding the general together. They were pumping him full of anti-rejection medication and microscopic nanites were bridging all the gaps between Grievous's brain and Jayan's body, forming connections to transmit impulses that had never been designed to travel there. In a human brain inserted to a human body, that might have worked more smoothly, though Obi-Wan had never heard of a case where the procedure had been a complete and resounding success - there had been a rate of 90% comas and deaths in the initial stages with only two patients surviving past the first few days. Both had been Force-sensitive, or at least the bodies involved had been. And, as Obi-Wan understood it, they only needed him to last long enough in his borrowed body for his mechanical one to be repaired or else replaced. But the odds of even that much happening weren't exactly in his favour.

When Grievous woke again, Obi-Wan was watching. He opened his new eyes and Obi-Wan watched Kalta Jayan's green irises shift wide in the relatively low light as he tried to make them focus. He watched them focus _on him_ , sitting there just a short distance away. He watched his chest rise and fall with each breath he took, as if he was applying that same focus to that process, too. Perhaps he was, Obi-Wan thought. He wasn't sure, but perhaps the incompatibilities between human and Kaleesh were such that a variety of usually involuntary, unconscious processes required his conscious effort. 

Grievous licked his lips and he opened his mouth and he closed it again, several times, working the muscles in his unfamiliar face as if exploring its functions before he made a sound, cleared his throat and tried again, experimentally. He sounded out syllables, coughed, grimaced, and Obi-Wan stood, poured a glass of water and took it over to him. He lifted it to his mouth and Grievous spluttered the first mouthful out again all over his medical gown but then studiously swallowed the second. Then he shifted slightly, his head still lolling back against the headboard, and he took a breath and tried to speak. 

The first few attempts were garbled sounds that Obi-Wan could make no sense of. Grievous's hands clenched into weak fists and he frowned, frustrated, and he tried again and again, until the sounds became words, and suddenly Obi-Wan understood.

"Where am I?" Grievous asked. 

"The Jedi Temple on Coruscant," Obi-Wan replied. "There was an accident."

"I don't remember." 

"Your ship crashed into a Republic cruiser," Obi-Wan explained. "Do you remember that?"

Grievous paused for a moment, apparently searching for that memory. "No," he said, and the look on his face gave Obi-Wan pause. 

"What _do_ you remember?" he asked. 

Grievous winced. He closed his eyes for several seconds, frowning, agitated, then he opened them again and took a few additional seconds to focus in on Obi-Wan again. 

"Nothing," he said, and Obi-Wan believed him, though he found the notion of it faintly sickening. Everything they'd had those surgeons do to him in order to preserve the chancellor's precious intelligence and that intelligence had been lost in spite of it - performing his due diligence only served to confirm that, when he closed his eyes and raised one hand and pried a little way into Grievous's mind. What he found there was next to nothing, a tangle of half-forgotten emotions with the memories they'd been built upon seemingly lost in a misty void beneath. Whether that was a temporary situation or else permanent was beyond Obi-Wan's skill to explore. He could feel new memories forming all around him. And then, in the midst of this, he felt something else. He wished he hadn't. 

"You remember something," he said. 

Grievous nodded faintly, the motion lacking any kind of refinement but the way Obi-Wan understood it, even that much was miraculous. 

"Yes," he replied. One of the hands that had lain uselessly at his side twitched upwards slightly. He jerked it up onto his lap with a groan and he pointed shakily with his first two fingers. He pointed at Obi-Wan and he told him, "I remember _you_." 

He could feel the truth in that statement and with a cold kind of dread, he peered into it. There was one memory still lodged inside Grievous's mind, one that Obi-Wan shared though he saw it then from quite another perspective than his own. He saw himself through the eyes of General Grievous, how small he seemed, how oddly coloured though he reminded himself that Grievous's senses were Kaleesh. He remembered that day, those three days he'd spent as Grievous's prisoner on his Droid Army flagship. He could still remember the chill of Grievous's cold metal hands on his skin. But Grievous's memory ended abruptly. Honestly, he was relieved it left off where it did. 

"We were lovers," Grievous said. 

Obi-Wan smiled bitterly. "No, we weren't," he replied, though he supposed he understood that conclusion. 

"I remember."

"You're wrong."

"I don't--"

"We're enemies." 

"Am I your captive?"

"I was sent to interrogate you."

"How will you do this when I remember nothing?"

Obi-Wan raked back his usually neat hair with the fingers of both hands. 

"I'll think of something," he said. And then he turned and he left the room with his heart hammering sickly. He took a strained breath with his back pressed to the wall just outside the room, as the door closed behind him. 

_Lovers_ wasn't the word he would have used, he thought. His choice would have been another word entirely. 

\---

"This is your assignment," Master Windu told him, when they were alone together in the Council room a little over three hours later. "Your history with Grievous is..." He winced briefly. "It's an advantage, Obi-Wan. We have few of them."

Obi-Wan's mouth twisted ruefully and he inclined his head to demonstrate his understanding because he did understand, though _advantage_ seemed like something of a stretch to him. Their time was limited by Grievous's situation and during those intervening three hours the Council had sent three separate experts to pry at Grievous's mind, to absolutely no avail. The Force could not be used to recover his memories, they said. The fact was, they would have to attempt to cajole his memories' return by other means and, Obi-Wan reluctantly agreed, he was uniquely qualified for that role. 

He returned to the cell that evening, with a small bag of his own belongings that he left in the adjoining room, on the bedroll on the floor that was really more than he required but not enough to make his stay remotely comfortable. Comfortable would have been his own room several floors above and at the opposite side of the complex, not a thin futon rolled out on the floor of a secondary room in a small holding cell suite, the medics and their supplies housed in the room that led away to one side and him in the room to the other. 

Master Windu had assured him that the 212th would be in capable hands during his secondment - his men would be under Ahsoka's command and Obi-Wan trusted her with them, and trusted them to follow her lead. He just wished her temporary command had not been made necessary at all.

When he returned to Grievous's room, he was trying to eat from a tray table resting over his lap; without a word; Obi-Wan settled in to help him, much as the thought sat oddly with him. At first, he used the Force to help guide his hands from tray to mouth, but then he steeled himself and settled closer to guide him with his own hands. It was the most unsettling experience he could recall in recent memory, his observation of the surgery excepted, considering the mind he knew was inside that flesh and blood body and what his body had been before. He hadn't known Master Jayan well at all but he _had_ known General Grievous. He'd know the strength of his metal limbs, metal hands around his wrists, the pinch and bruise and chill of it; he'd know his precision and his odd cybernetic grace, and there he was lying in a bed they'd borrowed from a med bay with a seven-day growth of stubble at his jaw, unable to lift a spoon without a struggle. 

"What is my name?" Grievous asked, when the soup was all finished, and Obi-Wan sat back in the chair that he'd dragged closer to the bed and considered what exactly his answer should be to that. Master Windu had made it clear that the Council trusted his judgement but that the chancellor and the Senate along with him demanded that they see results. Hiring the surgeons had been an expensive affair, perhaps especially because the had come from a non-Republic system where their horrific experiments had not been outlawed. The Senate had called it a necessary evil. Frankly, though he relayed the Senate's orders, Master Windu seemed very nearly as thoroughly unconvinced of that as Obi-Wan was. 

"Your name is Qymaen," Obi-Wan said, his choice made. 

"You are Kenobi."

"Yes. I am Obi-Wan Kenobi."

"I believe you are a good man." 

"I try to be."

"I do not believe you will kill me."

"I don't intend to, no," Obi-Wan replied, with a faintly bitter twist to his mouth. "But, as I told you, I _have_ been sent to interrogate you."

"How will you do that?" Grievous asked, as he had before. He sounded genuinely curious, and frankly so was Obi-Wan. It was simpler to just avoid the subject, however. 

"What have you been told about your condition?" he asked. 

"The doctors tell me this is not my body. It is rejecting me as we speak, and I will die soon if my own is not healed first." He quirked his brows. "Perhaps killing me would have been a mercy."

"I would have let you die," Obi-Wan said. 

"Would that have been a mercy?"

"I believe so, yes."

"You said we were enemies." 

"We are."

"Then why would you show mercy?"

"That's the Jedi way."

"Is that _your_ way?"

"Yes."

"I don't think that's mine."

Obi-Wan chuckled. "Yes," he said. "I doubt very much that it is."

Grievous curled his fingers at the hem of the blanket. Slowly, he turned his head this way and that. He flexed his feet, exploring his limited range of movement as Obi-Wan watched. 

"What do you want to know?" Grievous asked. 

"Separatist plans. Locations of bases. Strategies. Troop deployment. Everything you know about Count Dooku's droid army."

"I remember nothing of these things," Grievous said. "You will have to make me remember. Perhaps then we can discuss treachery."

Obi-Wan laughed harshly, taken off guard as he was, and he stood and he left the room. What Grievous had said made sense, he thought: there could be no interrogation without there being a memory of what the Senate wished to know inside his borrowed head. So he asked the doctors if there might be a treatment for it, medically or in the Force, and the answer came back negative: any medical intervention could interact with his medication and hasten his departure from the galaxy, and Force-based therapy was unlikely to recover much at all within their time frame, at least not without overloading a brain already reeling from surgery. The way they explained it, the surgeons had removed a number of implants from his head. All they could suggest was that he keep Grievous's mind stimulated so that he might regain his memories naturally. So, he supposed that was what he would do. 

In the morning, he helped him eat breakfast; he asked him _when was the last time you ate?_ but Grievous didn't know. Afterwards, he threw back the blanket and he helped him to move, Grievous's arm about his shoulders and his own around his waist to help him walk around the room; he asked him if it felt different in this body, but Grievous didn't know that, either. The next morning, he helped him to wash. He helped him to shave. He showed him Kalta Jayan's naked body, taller than Obi-Wan was, slim and leanly muscled, skin scarred from his work, hands calloused, but Grievous couldn't even say if it was similar or different to what he'd known before. Obi-Wan told him it was different, but found he didn't have the words to explain to him exactly how. 

The next morning, he asked for a wheelchair and once he'd helped him to dress, in trousers and a simple tunic that were fortunately not the property of the late Jedi master, he took him out of the room and down the corridors with two Temple guards trailing not too far behind them. He showed him only the most neutral of locations it was possible to find on any widely available Temple map: he showed him the fountains and the gardens and the view from the top of one tower that looked out over Coruscant. He named the buildings he could see and asked if Grievous knew them - he told him no, he didn't, and couldn't even say for sure if he'd ever visited the planet. 

They left the room again the following day, and the day after that. Grievous walked a little, unsteadily at first, but he progressed quite rapidly; Obi-Wan watched him, and he encouraged him to some extent, knowing that he'd relearned the basic functions of a new body once before already and perhaps the midi-chlorians in Kalta Jayan's blood might have been helping. The next day, they left the wheelchair behind in the room and they walked together, taking breaks when Grievous required them. They sat in the gardens and put names to plants and trees and flowers. They named the species of the other Jedi who passed by them, who were trying not to stare and mostly failing. They named planets: Coruscant, Serenno, Chalacta, Kalee. 

"I am Kaleesh," Grievous said, as they sat together on a bench at the foot of a tree. He turned his hands in the air in front of him. "My hands are not Kaleesh. Whose is this body?"

"It belonged to Jedi Master Kalta Jayan," Obi-Wan replied. "He died in the same crash that injured you."

"He was a warrior?"

"The Jedi are not warriors."

"His body is scarred. He fought."

"We're not warriors, but we're far from defenceless," Obi-Wan clarified. 

"I think I was a warrior." 

"You were," Obi-Wan agreed, and Grievous nodded, seemingly satisfied. It gave Obi-Wan an idea for what came next. 

The next morning, he took him to the training hall and Master Windu joined them there. Once Grievous was seated and out of the way, Obi-Wan took his lightsaber from his belt and he ignited it. Master Windu followed suit, and they fought, their blades humming and clashing as they ranged this way and that. Master Windu seemed to understand the logic of it: they had both fought with General Grievous, against his multiple Jedi lightsabers, and they thought perhaps a demonstration would serve to jog his memory at least a little. But, when they were done, Obi-Wan's brow damp with sweat and his pulse still quick, all that Grievous had for them was compliments on their form, and a critique of exactly how it was that Obi-Wan had lost the match. It was a disappointing outcome. 

The following day, Obi-Wan put a training sword into Grievous's hand and they fought a little, easily, as Obi-Wan explained their practices. He told him that he'd once been a warrior of great renown, because he had been, and he seemed pleased to hear it - pleased enough that they returned to fight the next day and again the day after that. His coordination improved as he tested the limits of his new body's abilities. So did his speed and his reflexes until a week had passed and even in another man's body, even dying, it was clear that Grievous was a force. Perhaps Master Windu and the Council didn't question his decision to fight with him each day but sometimes, as they ate dinner together at night in Grievous's cell, as he lay awake on his bedroll at night, Obi-Wan questioned it himself. It hadn't opened any doors into his memories. All he was doing was steadily making him deadly. 

The one consolation that Obi-Wan had was that Master Jayan's midi-chlorian-rich cells hadn't provided Grievous with access to the Force, at least not beyond the fact that he remained alive quite likely thanks to them. They tested it each day at the dining table in the cell and while Grievous himself seemed disappointed, Obi-Wan was not. He also couldn't find it in himself to rue the fact that Grievous's usual overt aggression seemed so very muted now - he fought well, yes, but he was always in control. Perhaps it was the result of the implants they'd removed, Obi-Wan thought, but he was almost like a different person. He was certainly a very different opponent. 

But still nothing came back to him, as two weeks became three. They spent long afternoons engaged in the lively debate of Jedi principles, which Obi-Wan found strangely invigorating; the fact was that Qymaen - Grievous - challenged him in ways that no one else had had the time or inclination to in years. They spent mornings training together or walking together or else in the cell with the doctors making their observation on Grievous's ever-evolving condition. It wasn't improving, they said; slowly, it was deteriorating. And, when three weeks in the Temple became four, then five, they were astounded that he'd lasted that long. 

"He should be dead," one of the doctors told Obi-Wan, away from the table where Grievous was dealing another hand of sabacc to pass the time. "Honestly, we can't understand why he's not."

Obi-Wan nodded his agreement, but honestly he couldn't say he was surprised. Grievous had been nothing if not tenacious; that Qymaen jai Sheelal was also that, though stripped of his seething anger and his memories along with his metal body, didn't strike him as shocking. 

But _still_ no memories returned, as they made new ones together. Obi-Wan found himself wondering if he would remember them, should he ever be restored to his old body. What horrified him was the fact he hoped he would. 

\---

In the sixth week, Obi-Wan realised his error. It was glaring, and he is still ashamed of it. 

They walked in the gardens after their usual morning training, on the way back down to the suite of cells they shared. Obi-Wan had been toying with the idea of asking the Council to move Qymaen to quarters that were actually quarters, with a window and a view and not the oppressive closeness of a subterranean prison, though he knew it was a terrible idea on several fronts, even aside from the obvious fact that Qymaen - _Grievous_ \- was, in fact, their prisoner and not their guest. Chiefly, that was the issue, but of not much lower important was the medical situation. Moving the entourage of specialist machinery could not have been undertaken lightly, and he needed it more each day. 

It was the medical situation that gave Obi-Wan his nudge on his new and rather odd trajectory. Qymaen stumbled suddenly as they walked together and Obi-Wan, too startled to catch him with the Force, grabbed at his tunic with both hands only to find himself dragged down along with him. As it happened, what was directly in their path and what they tumbled headlong into was the nearest fountain. Thirty seconds of spluttering and splashing later, they pulled themselves back out again, both soaked through to the skin. Qymaen assured him he was well, he could walk, it was just a momentary lapse that he'd thought he could push through and now knew not to try again, and he sounded sincere so they trudged their way back down to the cell, their sodden clothes and footwear dripping a trail down the corridors, telling the tale of where they'd been. 

Inside the room, in the 'fresher by the sink, they both stripped off their fountain-soaked clothes - they peeled them away from their skin layer by layer and tossed them into the shower cubicle until they were both naked. Obi-Wan turned away to retrieve a couple of fresh towels and when he turned back again to hand one to Qymaen under the rather stark 'fresher lights, his eyes strayed. he'd seen Qymaen's body - Master Jayan's body as was, of course - naked on more than one previous occasion by that point, as he'd assisted him with washing in those earliest days before he'd had sufficient coordination in his borrowed limbs to take care of the necessities himself, but this was something different. Qymaen's cock was erect. He didn't seem self-conscious about it in the slightest, but Obi-Wan could feel his own cheeks flushing pink. 

"Oh," Obi-Wan said, rather redundantly, before he could properly disguise his surprise, and he looked away awkwardly as he handed him a towel. "Apologies. Perhaps we should cover up." 

Qymaen raised his brows as Obi-Wan glanced back at his face. "Why should I hide my arousal?" he asked, seriously. He held the towel in his hands and made no attempt to cover himself at all. "Are you embarrassed to know that I desire you?"

"Yes, I suppose I am," Obi-Wan replied, as he averted his eyes in a rather vain attempt not to look again, accidentally or otherwise. "Perhaps the situation is different on Kalee, but this is not exactly the Jedi way."

"Do you not find this body attractive?" Qymaen asked, and at that point Obi-Wan looked again. He rapidly wished he hadn't. 

The issue wasn't that he didn't find the body attractive - the fact was he very much did. Master Jayan, although some ten to fifteen years older than Obi-Wan was himself, had kept himself in excellent shape and Obi-Wan found that shape quite appealing, with its long, muscled limbs and its smattering of dark hair over chest and abdomen. He couldn't even say the change from long hair to basically none had been a bad one, even if it was growing back in quite quickly. The issue wasn't even the pale scar that skimmed just a fraction shy of his hairline. It was the _why_ of that bacta-healed scar, knowing how it came to be there, and what lay hidden behind it. 

"I find the body attractive," Obi-Wan admitted. "But I'm afraid that doesn't change the fact that it's not _your_ body."

Qymaen brought his hands up to his hips. 

"It is now," he said, pragmatically. "Perhaps only briefly, but it is mine." 

"I can't pretend I don't know that wasn't always the case." 

"Did you know him well?"

"Well, no, not exactly."

"Were the two of you physically intimate?"

"No, we weren't."

"Then I don't understand the issue." 

Obi-Wan frowned. "This just isn't something Jedi do," he said, and he would have felt ashamed of resorting to that argument even if Qymaen hadn't seemed to understand perfectly that that was what it was: a last resort to escape an uncomfortable conversation that he just didn't want to have. But he didn't press further, and Obi-Wan had to admit he was grateful for that, at least. 

He left soon after, to report back to the Council on his progress, or rather his complete lack thereof. They all understood the situation clearly and he didn't believe for a second that they were comfortable with it, but they served at the pleasure of the Republic, taking their cues from the Senate and Chancellor Palpatine - all they could do in any real terms was give Obi-Wan the necessary trust and latitude required to do what had been asked of him by reassuring the chancellor that all that they could do was being done. 

However, he left the Council chamber feeling oddly unsettled, though whether as a result of his lack of results or of his strange encounter with their prisoner was not exactly clear. He took a slow walk through the Temple, alone for once, his hands tucked in neatly behind his back, his footsteps echoing in the quiet places. He'd found it difficult to keep abreast of news from the war without also spreading that news to their prisoner, but he had at least learned that Anakin and Ahsoka were well and the 212th had yet to suffer serious losses. However, Master Windu had allowed him to read the names and designations of the four troopers killed in their most recent action. He knew their names and the patterns painted on their armour. All he could do was pause quickly on his long walk back to the cells to send a quick communiqué to Cody. It was brief and ostensibly professional but the commander would understand his meaning: as much as it was in one way pleasant to be away from the front lines, his assignment was not a comfortable one. His place was with his men. And, furthermore, he would mourn their dead as deeply as they did themselves. 

He returned to the cell. He had obligations, to the Council, to the 212th, to everyone who lived in the path of the Separatist droid army, and he was failing in those obligations in spite of all his best efforts. It nagged at him as Qymaen's gaze followed him from the door and into his adjoining room. And, as he sat down cross-legged on the paved floor to attempt some form of meditation, he knew exactly _why_ it bothered him. He wasn't sure that he could call what he was doing his _best efforts_ , not really. There was still something he hadn't tried, which Qymaen had made abundantly clear to him. He just hadn't been inclined to try it, for a variety of reasons that all seemed quite petty in comparison with his men losing their lives. 

He watched Qymaen at dinner, wondering how he'd missed this thing that was now so apparent every time he looked at him. He could see it in him when they trained in the morning, when they took their usual walk together, and after dinner that evening, after an hour that Obi-Wan spent reading while the doctors performed their daily tests, the medics departed to their room and Obi-Wan put down his book. He paused in his seat as Qymaen looked at him that way he must have been completely blind that he hadn't noticed. Qymaen looked at him, who was so different to the enemy he'd known. 

"What exactly do you remember about me from before this?" Obi-Wan asked, attempted to sound conversational about it though he was gripping white-knuckled at the arms of his chair. 

Qymaen tilted his head and came closer. "I remember looking at you," he said. "You seemed smaller." 

"You were substantially taller," Obi-Wan told him. "What else?"

"I remember your skin." Qymaen moved closer still, and he held out one hand, gesturing to Obi-Wan's face. "Colours seemed different. Paler. You are more vivid now. Is that Kaleesh vision?"

"Perhaps," Obi-Wan said, though he'd heard even Grievous's eyes had been altered so perhaps it was a function of Separatist meddling more than it was a difference in their species. "Human and Kaleesh biology is very different. What else?"

"My fingers in your hair." He slid his human fingers into Obi-Wan's hair then to punctuate the point and Obi-Wan let him do it, willing himself not to tense at it. "They were metal. Did I have another accident before the crash?"

"Yes, you did," Obi-Wan replied. "Another crash, I believe." 

"I don't remember that." 

"What _do_ you remember?"

"Your face. It was bloody. Was your nose broken?"

"Yes." Qymaen touched his face, fingertips to his cheeks, one thumb brushing a line down the bridge of his nose, and he didn't flinch, if only because he willed himself not to. "You broke it."

"Why?"

Obi-Wan raised his brows wryly but significantly. "We were enemies," he said. "I believe I've mentioned that to you once or twice."

"You did," Qymaen agreed, and he leaned forward over the chair where Obi-Wan was sitting. He paused, then he planted one knee either side of Obi-Wan's thighs and he settled over him, in front of him, his hands at Obi-Wan's shoulders as the chair gave an ominous creak. 

"I don't think we are enemies," Qymaen said, his green eyes so close and trained on Obi-Wan, close enough to see the variations in the irises, and he was warm and solid and his thumbs brushed the sides of Obi-Wan's neck and made him shiver. He was attracted to him, not just because he was right there straddling his lap and so the situation almost called for it. He was attracted to him, and not because of an old attraction to Kalta Jayan that had carried over to him because while Master Jayan had been an attractive man objectively, Obi-Wan had never been attracted to _him_ , personally. The unnerving fact of the matter was rather that he found himself attracted to Qymaen jai Sheelal, or at least to the pseudo-existent entity currently answering to that name. The notion should have turned his stomach. Instead, he let his hands stray up over Qymaen's arms, over the top of his tunic. Instead, he trailed his fingertips up over Qymaen's bare, prickly throat, over his jaw, and around to the back of his neck. Instead, he leaned up and he kissed him. Qymaen, for his part, kissed him back. 

He should have ended it there and he knew it. He was acutely aware of that fact but his pulse quickened with a kind of odd, anxious excitement, perhaps because he knew what he was doing - what _they_ were doing - was so far outside the normal bounds of Jedi propriety. He knew Qymaen well enough to know he had no particular respect for Jedi rules, but _he_ did, and he knew he should stop. He didn't. When Qymaen pulled back, and pulled off his tunic and dropped it to the floor, Obi-Wan didn't stop him. He ran his hands over his chest instead, feeling somersaults in his stomach as his fingertips followed the lines of lean, defined muscle. He should have stopped but he knew he'd already made his decision and he knew he had to see it through. The thought should have filled him with dread or shame or at least some form of trepidation; the shameful thought was the fact that it thrilled him instead. 

He lifted Qymaen back up to his feet with the Force and then he rose, too. Qymaen watched as he unbuckled his belt with unsteady fingers, as he removed it, then his tunic and the undershirt beneath. He stripped himself to the waist and Qymaen looked at him almost like he hadn't already seen him wearing less than that as he leaned back against the edge of the table. He looked like he desired him, from the expression on his face and the way he gripped so tightly at the table's edge. That should have given him pause but it spurred him on. 

Obi-Wan stepped forward. He closed the gap between the two of them and he kissed him again, roughly, blunt fingernails raking the back of his neck, and Qymaen chuckled against him. He seemed to understand that this kind of thing was difficult for Obi-Wan but not exactly _why_ , so perhaps he found the fact he'd decided to break the rules amusing, or else who knew what he thought. Obi-Wan was more focused on his mouth than on his amusement, on the way Qymaen's warm, calloused hands felt on his bare skin as they skimmed his back, on the fact he could feel Qymaen's cock pressed to his hip, already half hard from what they were doing. He should have hated it. He'd expected to hate it. But when he slipped one hand down over the front of Qymaen's trousers and squeezed there lightly, when he nudged that hand down under the thick fabric waistband and wrapped his fingers around the length of him, all he could think was that he wanted it. That somehow didn't make it easier. 

He pulled back. He shoved his own trousers down over his hips to the tops of his boots and gave Qymaen a hot, silent glance before he leaned down low over the table, resting on his forearms. A brief moment and Qymaen joined him, his hands tracing the line of Obi-Wan's spine from the nape of his neck to the cleft of his arse. He heard Qymaen remove his trousers. He felt the length of his cock rest against his backside. He felt him part his cheeks and rub the pad of one thumb against his exposed hole. Obi-Wan shivered and Qymaen made an mused sort of sound at that but not for long - he left, rifled through the trays of inoffensive accessories the doctors had taken to leaving in the room for their own ease of storage, and returned with a tube of medical lubricant. Obi-Wan rested his forehead down against the table with an ironic, exasperated kind of smile on his face that only lasted as long as it took for Qymaen's slick fingers to find his hole and push against it. He shuffled his feet a little wide apart. Then, the tip of Qymaen's cock was against him. 

He pushed in. Obi-Wan gripped the far side of the table with both hands and Qymaen pushed into him, steadily, slowly, making his breath hitch and his muscles tense. He could feel it, the oddly inexorable forward motion of the penetration, how he stretched tight around him, how the lubricant eased his way but the friction was still high. He took a shaky breath as Qymaen's hands moved to his hips and he braced himself as Qymaen began to move in him, began fucking him, the motion making Obi-Wan rock up onto the balls of his feet with each thrust. He'd expected to hate it but it was nothing like it had been before, months ago, when he'd been Grievous's captive. His pulse quickened. his breath quickened. It didn't hurt. It felt good. He _liked_ it. 

He pushed back to meet Qymaen's next thrust, the collision forcing him deeper and making them both groan out loud with it. Qymaen's hands tightened at his hips but they wouldn't leave bruises like Grievous's had and then one slipped down around Obi-Wan's waist, skimmed his abdomen and found his cock. He could barely hear Qymaen's harsh breath over the sound of his own in his ears and he clenched his jaw, the muscles in his thighs started to tremble. He lost his grip on the table and clawed at it and Qymaen groaned out loud with almost every thrust inside him, making no attempt to limit himself at all. Obi-Wan's face was flushed with it but those sounds made him shiver against him, made his cock harden even further in his grasp, made his hole pull even tighter around him until Qymaen could barely move but that didn't seem to matter. Obi-Wan's hips jerked and his jaw clenched so tight it actually almost hurt and he spilled himself in hot, thick pulses over Qymaen's hand. Forty seconds later, Qymaen groaned, rough and low, and bucked and came inside him. Honestly, none of it had been as Obi-Wan had expected it to be. Not at all.

And after, as they eased apart, as they caught their breath, Obi-Wan asked the question, _what do you remember?_ The rueful look on Qymaen's face said he'd have told him everything he wanted to know if he'd known it; if he'd known, if he'd remembered, Obi-Wan was sure that would not have been the case. 

The awful truth was, he'd done it for nothing. It hadn't worked at all. 

\---

Obi-Wan slept fitfully, turning, his body aching. Inside his head wasn't very much better, or perhaps it was considerably worse: inside his head, as he drifted at the borderline between wakefulness and sleep, was a mix of what they'd done the previous night and what had been done to him months earlier. He imagined the best of it soured by the worst. He imagined Grievous's yellow-gold eyes in Qymaen's face. 

He woke when the door to his room opened and he looked up, one hand reaching for his lightsaber, his heart hammering in his chest, to see Qymaen leaning there naked against the frame. He was backlit from the next room, with the tube of lubricant in his hand, his intentions painfully obvious. Obi-Wan left the lightsaber where it was. He lay back down, and Qymaen evidently took that as an invitation. He supposed it was, or at least it wasn't not. 

Qymaen threw the blanket back and Obi-Wan let him do it, even knowing he was naked himself underneath it. He let him stretch out on top of him there on his bedroll on the floor, skin on skin. He brought his knees up to frame Qymaen's hips as he let him press his mouth to the side of his neck, under his jaw, over his pulse. He watched him sit up on his heels. He watched him slick his cock and let him ease one of his legs up over his shoulder, calf to collarbone. Obi-Wan wrapped his other leg high over Qymaen's back as he felt him push into him, bent almost double with it but the stretch after his poor night's sleep was unexpectedly quite pleasant. So was the feel of Qymaen's biceps in his hands. So was the cock that stretched and filled him, and the fascinated, fascinating look on Qymaen's face as their eyes met. 

Qymaen fucked him slowly till they were both gasping with it as they moved together, damp with sweat, muscles straining. Qymaen didn't even try to hide his pleasure - Obi-Wan could see it in his face and feel it in the Force, bright and hot and unbearably honest. Obi-Wan let himself feel it. He let himself reciprocate it, till Qymaen came inside him. He came himself not long after, just from the friction of his cock against Qymaen's stomach, squeezing hard around Qymaen's cock that was still pushed up deep inside him. 

They showered afterwards, together though that hadn't exactly been Obi-Wan's intention - the fact was, though, that Qymaen's balance was just slightly off, equilibrium not quite aligned, and they didn't speak about it but the reason for it was quite glaringly obvious. Obi-Wan shored him up under the shower so that he could wash himself and when they were done, he stepped in and pressed his chest up against the line of Obi-Wan's bare, shower-soaked back. He wrapped his arms around his waist and for a moment they stood there under the spray, Obi-Wan's hands to the wall and his head bowed. The fact of it was that Qymaen had been living on borrowed time since the start. The doctors were entirely baffled that he'd lasted even this long. He really couldn't have long left at all. 

They carried on as normal for the next few days that followed, or at least they tried to. They walked together, though occasionally Qymaen stumbled. They trained together, though Qymaen was frustrated by his slowing reaction times. They ate together and they talked and the doctors did their tests and they confirmed what the two of them had both clearly suspected but hadn't voiced: rejection was taking hold and the medications could no longer effectively prevent it. They said he might have a week, or might be dead in forty minutes; neither extreme would have surprised them, it seemed, since they'd thought he should have died weeks earlier than that. 

That first night, Qymaen left his own room and entered Obi-Wan's, and he didn't turn him away although he knew he should have. He went up on his hands and knees and Qymaen had him like that, slow and deep, before they went to sleep. The second night, Qymaen sucked his cock then had him on his back, face to face and eye to eye and gasping. The third night, it was just easier for Qymaen to stretch out on his back and let Obi-Wan straddle his hips; he rode him slowly, his hips rocking, grinding, muscles taut. He was getting worse and worse, deteriorating rapidly, until more and more motions took more and more thought and time and focus to complete. It was coming to an end and they knew it. Of course, none of it should have ever begun. 

On the fourth day, Obi-Wan made his next report to the Council. They never questioned his methods or indeed even enquired as to what they were, and they certainly never implied he wasn't doing all he could, but Obi-Wan felt he'd failed in his duty anyway. But, as he returned, he asked himself if he truly believed he'd exhausted every possibility, and honestly, brutally honestly, he had to admit there were steps he could take that went beyond even the extent of what he'd done so far. he had no desire to admit their possibility existed, but he knew. He hadn't gone far enough. He had one last card left to play. 

"There's something I need to show you," he said, when he returned to the cell, and Qymaen looked intrigued by that though Obi-Wan really wished he hadn't. So, they left the room, and they made their way slowly to a part of the Temple that was usually out of bounds. They went into the laboratories with their antiseptic smell and bright, harsh lights, and they followed the long corridor to a pair of forbidding durasteel double doors. Obi-Wan opened them. He knew what was inside and was prepared for it; Qymaen, on the other hand, wasn't. He clenched his fists. Obi-Wan understood his reaction. 

The small team of scientists and technicians beat a hasty retreat as they entered, with a nod from Obi-Wan. Qymaen stepped forward to the long metal workbench. He rested one hand on his own cyborg body's chest. 

"Is this me?" he asked. 

"Yes." 

"You didn't tell me." 

"No, I didn't." 

"You let me believe I was Kaleesh." 

"You are." Obi-Wan sighed. "You're just also...this, too."

Qymaen traced the faceplate with his fingertips, leaning over it; he traced the orbits of the eye sockets, the grille in front of the vocoder unit, the smooth lines and the sharp edges. Obi-Wan wasn't sure if his hesitation was an emotional reaction or just physical, a part of his condition. 

"What do you remember?" Obi-Wan asked. 

"You," Qymaen replied. "Your skin. My fingers in your hair."

"What else?"

"Your blood. Your broken nose."

"What _else_?"

Qymaen looked at him sharply, his hands still on the metal body lying there in front of him. 

"I remember having you. In this body." He frowned. "Did that happen?"

"Yes." 

"I held you down." 

"Yes." 

"I forced you." 

"Yes." 

"Why?"

"I suppose your commander must have ordered you not to kill me," Obi-Wan said, then he smiled wryly. "I doubt there were any such orders that you not violate me, however." 

"I don't understand." 

Obi-Wan shrugged faintly. "We were enemies," he said. "Did you think I was making that up?"

No. But what I remembered...I assumed there was affection between us, in spite of that." 

"I didn't lie to you. I told you we weren't lovers." 

Qymaen paused then, looking away from him as he took his hands back off the cyborg body on the table. The expression on his face was something bordering on terrible that made Obi-Wan's stomach clench and threw off the balance of his calm even more than it was already. He wasn't calm. He wasn't sure he'd been calm since the day of the surgery.

"Are we now?" Qymaen asked. 

"Are we what?"

Qymaen's gaze snapped back to him, hard and confused and conflicted. 

"Are we _lovers_ now?" he asked, hotly. 

Obi-Wan clamped one hand down over his own mouth for a moment. He rubbed his face, ran that hand down over his beard, over his throat, as he looked at him. He didn't have an answer, at least not one that made sense to him, because the first response that came to mind was utterly ridiculous. Until he thought about it, much as he didn't relish the idea of doing so, and the realisation dawned. He knew the extent of his own error. His throat felt tight. 

"Yes," he said, unsteadily. "We're lovers now." He stepped forward, and he cupped Qymaen's face in his hands. "But don't believe for one second that we will be if you remember." He raised his brows. "The other you, _this_ you, wants me dead." 

They left together. They went back to the cells. When they got there, Qymaen sat down heavily on a chair at the small dining table and Obi-Wan paused just a moment before he straddled his lap, his forehead resting against Qymaen's shoulder, Qymaen's arms around his waist. Qymaen pressed his mouth to Obi-Wan's neck, scraped there just lightly with his teeth, breathed against his skin, then he braced himself and pushed up to his feet as Obi-Wan chuckled darkly and stepped back against the table. He'd got himself into a rather awkward mess and he knew it because as much as he'd have liked to have believed the contrary, General Grievous and Qymaen jai Sheelal were not two different people. Qymaen _was_ Grievous, just stripped of all the memories that made him him, stripped of his hatred for the Jedi in general and for him in particular. He'd broken the Jedi code to sleep with a man who had tried to kill him on multiple occasions, but he didn't try to stop him when Qymaen pressed his mouth to his, hot and hard. He took him to bed instead. 

Qymaen stretched out on his back once he was naked and Obi-Wan knelt between his thighs. He skimmed them with the back of his fingers, lightly, wishing he could convince himself that his attraction was purely to Kalta Jayan's body and not to Qymaen jai Sheelal inside it, the skilled but ailing warrior who had made him understand himself in ways he perhaps hadn't wished to. Ge bent his head to press his mouth to the inside of one thigh, to the outside of one hip, to his taut abdomen, to the base of his cock, and he knew that all he was doing was making the situation that but worse. But he pressed a sucking kiss to the underside of the head of Qymaen's cock then he took him into his mouth with a swirl of his tongue. The way that Qymaen groaned, so unrestrained by any code except that which he made himself, it was impossible for Obi-Wan to change his mind. 

He didn't let him finish like that. He pulled back as Qymaen's hands started to clutch at the bedroll beneath him and then Obi-Wan moved, retrieved the lubricant that at some point they'd just left there in his room, and Qymaen caught his wrist. he took the tube and he slicked Obi-Wan's cock instead of his own and Obi-Wan attempted to steady himself as he did so. He stilled wasn't remotely steady when he circled the rim of Qymaen's hole with his fingertips a minute later. He definitely wasn't steady a minute after that, when he guided the thick tip of his cock between Qymaen's cheeks. His breath caught as he began to push inside him, sinking in deep. He wished he hadn't done it almost as soon as he had; he'd ruined himself over a man who'd be dead in under a week, and who'd barely ever existed at all. He wished he hadn't done it; honestly, he wasn't sure if he was sleeping with the enemy or desecrating a fucking corpse. 

It wasn't long until he came inside him, straining and fucking ashamed. But then Qymaen kissed him, bit his bottom lip and made him laugh out loud at the absurdity of it all. 

He wondered which of the two men he'd remember most when it was over. He honestly wasn't sure. 

\---

It didn't happen the next day - they spent that time in the cell playing cards and glancing at each other, discussing what little Obi-Wan knew about Kaleesh biology that basically began and ended with the fact that they and humans were sexually incompatible: the barbed Kaleesh penis wasn't exactly designed for delicate human skin, and the human penis was too thick for insertion into a Kaleesh, perhaps especially anally. Penetration was only possible with surgical alterations, which could be paid for on a number of non-Republic worlds or else in back-alley, black market clinics of dubious repute. Qymaen laughed not quite bitterly and pointed out he wasn't exactly a stranger to illicit medical procedures. Obi-Wan saw his point. 

It didn't happen on the second day, when Qymaen was lacking in coordination almost to the point where he couldn't sit himself up, never mind get up and walk. Obi-Wan fetched the wheelchair they'd last used weeks before and they spent most of the day in the gardens, talking about the war, and about what Obi-Wan knew of the birth of General Grievous. He told him about the Yam'rii Crisis, and how the Jedi had in all good faith been dispatched by the Senate to end it. He told him about his wives and his children and Ronderu lij Kummar, because he supposed that he deserved to know. He told him he'd called himself _Grievous_ , and he supposed the name seemed apt. And Qymaen listened, but he didn't remember. 

It happened on the third day. Master Windu came to the cell as Obi-Wan was helping Qymaen take a drink of water because even the ability to lift his hands was gone, and he told them, "General, your body has been repaired. They'll be expecting you in the lab."

"What does that mean?" Qymaen asked, though he struggled even to speak. 

Obi-Wan winced. "That means we find out if our overpriced surgeons can reverse their process," he told him, as Master Windu turned away and departed the room again, his visit exceptionally brief; Obi-Wan understood, he supposed, because the sight of Grievous inside Kalta Jayan was still jarring to most. and more so with his present immobility. The other Jedi had never quite managed to control their stares, though they'd tried to. master Jayan had been one of them, after all.

"And if I prefer to die?" Qymaen asked. 

"I'm afraid the Senate won't let you." 

Qymaen nodded. "I understand," he said. |You would have let me die months ago." 

Obi-Wan smiled ruefully. "I would have, yes," he replied, though honestly he wasn't sure if he would have still made that choice knowing what would come as a result of it. He had many regrets but knowing Qymaen jai Sheelal as he did then was not one of them. 

Their preparations weren't exactly hurried. Obi-Wan knew Master Jayan's body would be washed and dressed in a set of his own clothes before the funeral but he took Qymaen to the shower anyway, more to feel his hands on his bare skin one last time than to clean him. Then he helped him to dress and they spent a few moments sitting there together, in silence, before leaving for the last time. 

"Will I remember?" Qymaen asked, as Obi-Wan helped him up onto the surgical table, doctors and technicians fussing all around them. 

"I don't know," Obi-Wan admitted. 

"Would you prefer I did or didn't?"

Obi-Wan sighed. He shook his head. "I don't know," he said again, because he didn't know - on one hand, General Grievous might prove to be their most important source of intelligence in just the way the Senate thought he might, even if his information was more than two months out of date, but on the other, regaining Grievous meant losing something else. It was something Obi-Wan should have never had, of course, but that didn't mean he wouldn't feel its loss. Qymaen, it seemed, understood his dilemma. He smiled faintly, and then he closed his eyes. The anaesthetic took hold quickly. 

Obi-Wan stayed to watch, as he had the first time. He watched scalpels and lasters and wads of gauze soaked with blood and Qymaen's brain reunited with his cyborg body, his organs brought out of storage and wired back into place. He sat there for hours, and then moved with him to the secure recovery room because, he told himself, even if his enemy woke and not his lover, his place was still there. He hadn't been reassigned. He was still Grievous's interrogator. 

When he opened his eyes several hours later, they were gold and not green. They focused in sharply on Obi-Wan. 

"Kenobi," he said, in that old harsh, semi-synthetic tone, startling him though Obi-Wan had known he should expect it. Then he closed his eyes and he slept again. 

When he woke for the second time, the following morning, Obi-Wan was still there, waiting. 

"Kenobi," he said again, and before Obi-Wan could react at all, he'd seized his wrist in one big metal hand and squeezed almost until it broke. The doctor on duty sedated him quickly, then scanned Obi-Wan's wrist and pronounced it only bruised. He sat there looking at it, noting how the bruise began to blossom over his skin as the time passed. He understood what it meant. He had Qymaen - Grievous - shackled to the bed before he had the time to wake again. 

When he did wake again, an hour later, Obi-Wan was _still_ there. He'd just moved his chair back to a safer distance. 

"Kenobi," Grievous said. 

"Yes, General," he replied, drily. "Did you expect someone else, perhaps?"

Grievous rattled the chains at his wrists. He pulled on them and made the bed creak but the security team had thought of that - the frame was made of rather sturdy stuff, so Grievous couldn't break it. Not that it seemed he was trying very hard to do so, if at all - there was no urgency to it, no anger, no real violence. He closed his eyes, though this time it was clear he was still conscious. 

"What do you remember?" Obi-Wan asked. "Do you remember the crash?"

"Yes," Grievous replied. 

"Do you remember what caused it?"

"Yes. I steered my ship into a Republic cruiser rather than be taken alive. It did not work."

"What else do you remember?"

Grievous opened his eyes again. He looked straight at Obi-Wan. 

"I remember everything," he said. "You should have let me die."

\---

Grievous woke six months ago. Four days later, he told them everything he knew. 

At first, Obi-Wan didn't trust it, or indeed him. He asked the questions and he noted the answers and relayed them to the Council who then in turn told the Senate, but he didn't trust a word he said. Not until the information led them to a major Separatist base and the next question Obi-Wan asked was, "Why are you helping us?"

"I remember everything," Grievous said. "That includes the things they made me forget." 

It was true, the scientists and the doctors agreed: one of the implants their hired surgeons had removed from his brain and then not replaced had been put there to suppress his memories, albeit selectively; the other, they said, had been put there to enhance his rage. Perhaps he also remembered hating the Jedi, he said, but at least they'd never lied to him. The Banking Clan had caused the crash that had broken him, the first crash, _the_ crash, then broken him further so he'd had no choice but to agree. They'd made him into this thing that he hated even more than he hated the Jedi. They'd manipulated him into slavery, just as the Yam'rii would have liked to have done to all Kaleesh. 

Six months ago, he told them everything they knew, or at least that was when it started. It took seventeen days for Obi-Wan to fully debrief him, sitting in the cell he'd thought he'd never return to, and then he was sent back to the 212th. It was what he'd wanted, he told himself. Rejoining his men was the reason behind everything he'd done, but the first time he returned to Coruscant after his long-awaited redeployment, one month later, Master Windu told him Grievous had been asking for him. The Council wondered if it might be important, so he steeled himself and he went down to the cells. 

The room had changed a lot in that month. The doctors had moved out and a larger table had moved in, covered with maps and schematics. A display panel was mounted on the wall, showing the current intelligence on Separatist troop deployment. Master Windu had told Obi-Wan what to expect - Grievous had agreed to work for them in exchange for all the Jedi information on the Huk War. He'd quickly come to understand the extent of the Trade Federation's manipulations and though he still resented the Jedi for their involvement, he knew they'd been the instruments and not the orchestrators. Grievous was, Master Windu said, a valuable asset. 

"You asked for me," Obi-Wan said, as the door closed behind him, no guards in sight. As he understood it, the Council had offered him another space in which to live and work, but he'd refused and kept his suite of cells instead. 

Grievous turned to look at him. "Kenobi," he said. "Yes, I asked for you." 

Obi-Wan's face remained carefully neutral as he looked around the room, at the changes, and the points of similarity with when he'd spent so much of his time there. He looked at the space where Qymaen's med bay bed had been, now removed as Grievous had no need of it. He looked at the gouges in the stone floor that Grievous's duranium claws had made there. He looked at the closed door that led into the room where he'd slept at night, and where they'd broken his vows and gone against the code he'd followed all his life. But he'd attended Kalta Jayan's funeral, and seen his body burn. What was in front of him then was General Grievous, though technically general no more. 

"What do you want?" he asked. 

"I want to fight you," Grievous said, apparently quite serious about it. Obi-Wan couldn't help it: he laughed out loud, shook his head, and walked away. 

Grievous asked again the next day, and the day after that, until Obi-Wan gave in and suggested a time. They met alone in the training hall, though Anakin and Cody both protested that they should be there with him, just in case what Grievous wanted was the head of Obi-Wan Kenobi and this had all been his elaborate plan to get it. The fact was, though, that Obi-Wan didn't believe that; he was so sure, in fact, that when he arrived and found Grievous already there, swinging a practice sword in the air, he threw him a lightsaber. It was Kalta Jayan's, as it happened. Master Windu had given it to him. 

"You trust me not to kill you with this?" Grievous said, as he ignited the saber in a bright green glow and tossed the practice sword aside. 

"Well, you're more than welcome to try," he replied. He ignited his own lightsaber. He stepped forward. They began. 

As it turned out, as they fought, Grievous didn't try to kill him. They danced around each other in the the hum and crackle of their lightsaber blades and though they fought hard, and fought long, and Obi-Wan's pulse raced, and they traded barbs, he never once felt he was in any immediate danger. He wasn't sure he understood why Grievous had requested it, but by the end he was almost glad he had. It was almost, _almost_ , like all those days with Qymaen. And, once their blades were extinguished and Obi-Wan had caught his breath, they went their separate ways. 

They fought again a week later and then two weeks after that, and then every day that Obi-Wan was in the Temple and fit enough to wield a sword. In the fifth week or the sixth, he returned with a blaster shot to the shoulder and when Grievous appeared in the medical wing, Anakin offered to fight him instead. Grievous declined rather bluntly and strode away the way he'd come. Anakin quirked a brow at Obi-Wan and Obi-Wan shrugged. He understood the unasked question, but he didn't have an answer for it. 

In the fourteenth week, the Council asked Grievous to join him in the field. The assignment wasn't difficult in theory but it required a certain expertise that Grievous happened to possess and they both seemed to understand that the assignment itself was of virtually no importance at all, except as an evaluation of Grievous's readiness to leave the Temple in support of the cause he'd apparently chosen to make his own. It was vengeance again on his part, of course - he wanted Dooku dead more than he cared about punishing Jedi. Of course, no one had ever expected him to conform to the Jedi code himself, so that was perfectly acceptable. According to the chancellor, at least. 

The mission was a success. So was the next. So was the next, too, with Grievous joining the 212th and ignoring the troopers' stares. They fought together, Master Jayan's lightsaber in Grievous's hand, on that assignment and the three that followed. They were making headway against Dooku's forces. Obi-Wan told himself that was the only reason he was pleased by it all, and not that sometimes there was a hint of the man he'd known in the man who fought so hard beside him. 

And then, one night not so long ago, Obi-Wan joined Grievous in his room to make plans for their next operation. They sat at the table and they argued but that was all just a part of the process they'd developed, each taking an opposing view to test the plan for weaknesses, even if that view was not actually their own. Sometimes Obi-Wan argued for a show of brutal force, and sometimes Grievous argued for subtlety. 

That night, they argued for hours, and then Obi-Wan stood and he tripped and Grievous caught him, steadying him with his hands at his arms. Obi-Wan looked up at him, standing so close, his gold eyes on him, and he felt his pulse skip. Grievous's grip tightened a fraction. Obi-Wan winced. Grievous let go. 

"I apologise," Grievous said, and Obi-Wan frowned. 

"It didn't hurt," he replied. "I was thinking about something else."

"About what?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Yes." 

"About being your prisoner." 

Grievous inclined his head and then stepped away. 

"What I did is not my people's way," he said, as if choosing his words carefully, but if he was then it entirely escaped Obi-Wan's comprehension. 

"I didn't think it was," he replied. "At least no more than working for the Banking Clan or fighting with a lightsaber." He paused. He stepped farther away. Then he changed his mind and turned back to him, reaching up to hook his fingers in under the wide metal collar piece at the base of his neck. 

"Was it the implant or did you want to do it," he asked. 

"I don't know," Grievous replied. 

"Do you want to do it now?" he asked. 

"Do I desire to take you against your will?"

"Yes." 

"No." He paused. He looked at him, Obi-Wan's hands still clinging to his metalwork, then slowly Grievous brought his own hands to rest at Obi-Wan's hips. 

"But, if you were willing..." he said, and Obi-Wan let go and stepped back, wide-eyed, as if burned by him. 

"I'm not willing," he said, a cold flush of adrenaline rising up inside him. 

"I remember everything," Grievous said, as if that explained, and Obi-Wan shook his head. He took another step back. 

"So do I," he said. And he turned and walked away. He practically fled. 

The problem was, Obi-Wan returned to that thought as he lay awake in bed that night. he thought it through to its natural conclusion, squeezing his eyes closed as his fingers squeezed around his cock. Grievous remembered _everything_. he understood the implications: now that the implants were gone from inside his head, he remembered his life on Kalee, the Huk War, his shuttle crash. He remembered the war, and taking Obi-Wan prisoner, but he also remembered _everything else_ , too. In Grievous's head were the months he'd spent without memories at all, in the Temple, in a body that wasn't his own. He remembered everything they'd done together. So did Obi-Wan, and more than once he'd stroked himself under the sheets as he'd thought about it. He still felt that loss. 

The next morning, they fought as usual, though Obi-Wan found himself a little lacking in his usual witty repartee, and then they went their separate ways. He spoke with Master Windu about their upcoming mission, and with Anakin and Ahsoka about precisely nothing at all, and he ate, and he read a little, and he walked in the Temple gardens. He watched the sunset from his window, and reviewed the mission plans, and he went to bed. He didn't stay. He pulled on roughly half of his usual clothing in something of a hurry and he went down to the cells, to Grievous's room. 

When he opened the door, he wasn't there. Obi-Wan almost turned around and left again, almost relieved he hadn't found him, but then he spied the door to the adjoining room ajar and so he went to it and pushed it open; there was Grievous, sitting on the bedroll that Obi-Wan had frankly forgotten that he'd left there. He looked at him in the light from the next room, but didn't rise. 

"Why are you here?" Grievous asked. 

"Why are _you_ here?" Obi-Wan replied. "What do you remember?"

"You."

"What about me, exactly?"

"You said you hadn't lied to me." Grievous stood, pulling himself up tall. "You said we were lovers." 

"We were." 

"Not now?"

"Not now."

"Why?" he asked. "Does this body disgust you as it disgusts me?"

"Actually, no, it doesn't," Obi-Wan said. "I just--"

"Then what?"

Obi-Wan stepped forward. He rested both hands on Grievous's chestplate. 

"Can you feel this?" he asked. 

"I feel the pressure of it. Sensors relay the information."

"Then do you feel physical pleasure?"

"Not in the same way that you do," he said. "But yes." 

"And you feel desire." 

"Yes." 

"And you desire _me_ , yes?"

" _Yes_."

Obi-Wan felt himself blush hotly. "Do you still have it?" he asked. 

Grievous nodded. When he said, "Yes," his synthesised voice sounding oddly strained, it was obvious that he knew what Obi-Wan meant. 

He wasn't wearing much, just his boots and undershirt and trousers, so it took him not time at all to strip and to go down on his hands and knees there on the bedroll, his cock already hardening. And he watched Grievous move over his shoulder, watched him go down on his metallic knees behind him, his huge, cold hands skimming his hips. He didn't need to see more than that to know exactly what happened next because he'd seen it once before - the plates at Grievous's groin shifted apart and a huge duranium alloy cock emerged from within, and locked into place. Grievous reached for the lubricant that was still there on the floor where Obi-Wan had left it before, where _they_ had left it before. A moment later, Obi-Wan felt the cold tip of that cock pressing to his hole. He felt Grievous's cold hands part his cheeks. He felt him begin to push inside. 

For a moment, Obi-Wan was somewhere else, bleeding from his broken nose and pushed down low over a metal table that his hands were shackled to. He had Grievous's big shiny metal cock inside him, fucking him so hard that the bolts that fastened the table to the floor began to shift. Grievous had fucked him till his wrists were raw from the cuffs and his hole was bruised and stretched out wide from the size of him, torn from the friction, blood trickling down to his balls. For a moment he was there again, as Grievous pushed his cock inside him, opening, stretching him, but then the moment passed. Grievous entered him slowly, no piston-like slam of his hips. Grievous did it slowly, and Obi-Wan felt himself yielding, accommodating his thickness. 

Grievous fucked him. Obi-Wan's hands scrunched at the blankets of the bedroll and he kept his as still as he could, letting Grievous set the pace with his big metal cock that was warming from the heat of him. Where Grievous had been careless with him before, now he was careful, his grip at his hips tight but not bruising, pausing and pulling out to add a little extra lubricant. Obi-Wan groaned as he pushed back in, filling him up, fucking him deep. His history with Grievous had been why he'd been given the assignment in the first place, though Master Windu had clearly wished he hadn't had to do it. They'd known about what had happened, but not the whole story. Grievous had made him enjoy it, teased his cock and stimulated his prostate till he'd come and come and come, till there had been tears in his eyes as Grievous fucked him. Grievous had robbed him of his chastity, his virginity, in the most dreadful, transcendent way possible. He'd hated it, but he'd come every night for a month that followed with the memory of it bright inside his head. Now there they were again. It wasn't the same, but in so many ways it was. 

Grievous's cock buzzed against his prostate from the inside and Obi-Wan groaned and jerked and came, feeling his hole pull tight around Grievous's unyielding cock. He gasped in a breath and Grievous kept going, thrusting deep, and the way he sounded, the groans, it was just like he'd been before, in that room with him. He kept going and Obi-Wan pressed his forehead to the bedroll, pushing back to meet his thrusts - he came again, almost painfully, moaning, as Grievous pushed deep one last time. He wiped off his cock and pulled it back inside his plating. When he paused a moment to finger Obi-Wan's hole, Obi-Wan shuddered and cursed as he came in dry spasms around his metal fingertips. Then he turned and dropped exhaustedly onto his back. Part of him was appalled; another part was soaring. 

"I used to hate you," Grievous said, as he stroked at Obi-Wan's bare thighs. 

"I know," Obi-Wan replied. "I don't think you'll be surprised to hear you made it obvious." 

Grievous brushed the underside of Obi-Wan's overstimulated cock with the back of one cold hand. 

"On Kalee, love and hate are not mutually exclusive," he said. 

"They're not on Coruscant, either," Obi-Wan replied. 

"So, are we lovers?" Grievous asked. 

Obi-Wan paused, and he gathered himself. He pushed up to his knees rather weakly, then up to his feet, his pulse quickening again as he cupped Grievous's metal faceplate in his hands. He rested his forehead down against his, and he closed his eyes. 

"Yes," he said. "I think we are."

\---

Six months ago, Grievous woke. He told them everything. Now he's joined them. Now they work together. Now they fight together, side by side, and that seems to mean something profound to Grievous. Obi-Wan is happy to take it that way, too. 

When they're both at the Temple, like tonight, Obi-Wan joins him in his room. Grievous's body was designed for combat, without comfort or pleasure in mind, but they make do; when Grievous has him, Obi-Wan uses the Force to almost telegraph his pleasure to him so he knows he feels it. And, besides which, human and cyborg is still easier logistically than human and Kalee. 

When they captured him, Obi-Wan thought what they did to him robbed him of something. In a way, it did, but it had the unintended side effect of removing the blinkers from his yellow-gold eyes. Obi-Wan hates what they did, but Grievous - Qymaen - seems to be strangely content. He'll have his vengeance, he says, but his rage does not consume him any longer.

Tonight, Obi-Wan straddles Grievous's slim hips. He slicks his big cock, and he pushes himself down on it. He takes it all, slowly, his skin flushed, his own cock almost steel-hard, too. Grievous's eyes are on him, sharp and wide and intently focused. He watches. Obi-Wan wants him to. 

Perhaps it wasn't their intent, but they gave him back the man that he'd once been when they made him the man that he never was. 

Obi-Wan would have let him die. And now, he'd fight till his own dying breath so he can live.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from this quote from Kazuo Ishiguro: _Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers_.


End file.
